1 John 4: 15-18 If anyone acknowledges that Jesus is the Son of God, God lives in them and they in God. And so we know and rely on the love God has for us. God is love. Whoever lives in love lives in God, and God in them. This is how love is made complete among us so that we will have confidence on the day of judgment: In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment. The one who fears is not made perfect in love.
Looking back over my life and more specifically my life since I came to be in a relationship with God, I can remember these times when fear predominated a lot of my decisions. That fear has had three major effects on me; it is either really paralyzing or causes me to run far in the opposite direction of whatever is scary, and/or causes what I was fearing to actually come about in my attempt to avoid it. In every instance when I’ve functioned out of fear… nothing good has come of it.
This passage in 1 John 4 has helped me understand a lot about my fear lately. Ha what’s kind of ironic is that on the race the Lord has been stirring up things that happened in the last year of my life, which caused me to live in a pretty good amount of fear for quite a while now. He’s been showing me how I never really came out from that fear and, the ironic part is, that during that whole time I had this passage written huge on a white board in my room, so that every morning I would wake up and see these words. Sometimes no matter how many times you read something, it takes just getting out there and doing stuff to really understand it. This passage though, has been brought back up in the last couple weeks and one thing that been made blaringly obvious to me, that I didn’t see before, is that the opposite of fear is not bravery, it’s love. …Well okay, so I don’t think that I completely missed that concept while reading this passage before, but I do believe that I never understood how that actually proved true in life until now.
The thing I’ve realized is that fear puts us into an incredibly selfish mode of thought. I don’t know about you but whenever I’ve found myself afraid of doing something all the thoughts that are created by and fuel that fear are all thoughts to do with myself. How it will effect me, how things could go wrong for me, how uncomfortable it could make me, the potential of me failing and feeling horrible or stupid, what if I loose something I’ll never get back and so on. All thoughts centered on “I” and “me”. These thoughts also have something else huge in common. They are all caused by this worry of being hurt in the end. That hurt looks different in every circumstance that fear arises, but it always has something to do with me getting hurt. In 1 John 4 this is mentioned, “because fear has to do with punishment”. I’m seeing more and more how my worry of getting hurt can really be translated to a fear of being punished in someway if I were to do whatever it is I’m afraid of. And the ironic part of that is that since that fear isn’t from the Lord (generally whatever it is I’m afraid to do is actually what’s being prompted by Him) that fear though most times stops me from actually doing what He desires and then I end up feeling the pain and hurt caused by that, so what I was afraid, because I acted out of that fear, comes to be true.
What that’s looked like in real life is me constantly trying to run away or clamming up when the Lord speaks to me about something new He’s wants to do in my life. Sometimes those come because of past hurts I’ve experienced and what’s ahead seems similar to that previously hurtful situation, so I fear. Sometimes it comes just because what’s on the horizon is completely unknown to me. Instances of both these things have happened for me, basically on the regular, during this last year. A couple examples: I was in a previous relationship that in the end left me really hurt and confused about a lot of stuff, so when I started to like Caleb and our relationship started to progress I was seriously freaked out and repeatedly tried to run away from it in different ways because I was afraid of that same hurt happening again. Then when I went to training camp for the race, they asked me to be a team leader when I had never travelled outside of the US and wasn’t even sure at that point if I really understood all the aspects of what team leading would encompass. It was something completely foreign to me, literally in way, and scared the crap out of me coming into the race. By the grace of God these different fears I’ve encountered over the last year have never really stopped me from walking forward into what was frightening to me… though I would only walk forward trembling and overly cautious at times.
I can write all this in retrospect I believe largely because of the past couple weeks of my life. I honestly hadn’t thought too much into all of this until two weeks ago when one of my squad mates, Brandon Barnum, came up to me after a time of worship our squad had been having and asked me, “Do you realize how much you’ve changed in the past 4 months?” I responded, “well yah, I guess, I know there are for sure things I can look back on and see the change that was caused…” He shot back telling me, “You are such a fearless woman now. I don’t know if you remember at our launch, but you couldn’t sit through a team leader meeting with out looking like you were either going to burst into tears or poop your pants, but now… I don’t see that girl at all. You walk in confidence and are sure of who are you in the Lord”.
It’s true… I felt pretty scared sh**less and on the verge of tears a lot at launch, and it was true that I didn’t anymore. Here’s the thing though, I didn’t feel an ounce braver or anymore daring than before. What I quickly realized in looking back on these things is that how the Lord led me out of those fears, in each circumstance, was by leading me into love. He stirred up these loves in me that overcame the fears I had. The fears I had about Caleb disappeared as I saw his love for the Lord and consequently the care and love he had for me as, first and foremost his sister in Christ. And they continued to disappear as I became less concerned about how I would be loved by him and more concerned instead with how I could love him. As the race started and, trust it’s been a process, so even as it’s continued up to right now, the Lord has eased away my fears of leading my team of women by increasing my love for each of them. Because as my focus became less about me and more about loving others, all those fears began to blur and then become unrecognizable all together; they stood no chance in the face of love.
“In this world we are like Jesus. There is no fear in love. But perfect love drives out fear, because fear has to do with punishment” Our Savior was and is one incredible dude. As I’ve read this passage I’m reminded of what He did on the cross, the punishment and pain He took on and how fearlessly He did so. He was not concerned about punishment or pain because He was so focused on the victory and love. What suffering there was became His joy as He displayed His love for us in the best way possible set us free to live in a love like that. Before I knew Him, I knew nothing of this kind of love, that could drive out fear with its complete regard for others over self. I knew nothing of that kind of freedom. But He showed it to me and as I continue to get to know Him, I continue to learn and revel in it more and more. It's not something I just experienced once or saw in Him and then immediatly and seemlessly duplicated. Like I said, even since my coming to know Him I've lived in a lot fear. There’s a lot of traps, the enemy is quite the deceiver and loves to get us caught up in a webbing of worry, anxiety, dread, and the likes. We can even begin to think we are worried for someone else’s sake… it’s a lie, your worried about yourself somewhere in the matter… drop it and take up love. Listen to the Lord, He speaks… He has a voice and He uses it, listen to Him and act in His love with out regard to your comfort level. It’s not about you. and trust me… that's the most freeing relization I've had (time and time again).
